FFI - Part 3

And completed it!

This was an (unintentional) binge to get this series started. I was procrastinating something for school, excited to start, and the game absolutely sucked me in more than I expected.

Plus: it was cathartic.

Weird, right? But this game has been hanging over me since I was like seven years old. Failed early, gave up, and let t slide. My life is in kind of a bad, broke, lonely place at the moment, and I rarely follow-through on plans, desire for change, anything. I'm still giving up, just like I did then (though I of course don't blame my seven year old self - the interface and explanation was really not well-done iirc, and that shit was tough!).

I sometimes wonder whether I can use something I'm passionate about - gaming - to kick off wider change. Like, maybe if I can follow-through on this, I can follow-through on my other goals. Gaming can help me build a life instead of destroying it.

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On a less personal note, some thoughts on the game itself:

-Did the ending confuse anyone else?

I get that some kink in the elemental powers sent Garland back in time, where he sent the Fiends forward to send him back to send the Fiends to... Fine. Weird, but fine. But when did Garland become Chaos? Was he Chaos all along, or did he go back in time so often that he became a monster or am I entirely misreading this?

-The Chaos fight was really tough and really fun. My black wizard was pretty ineffective, and the knight and ninja were okay but nothing special. The white wizard though - she was the real champion. Her "Holy" spell did the most damage, but most of her mana was spent keeping my party alive.

-Chaos' spell effects were phenomenal. Tsunami was my favorite, but Cyclone (a lightning-filled twister spinning my party around and spitting them out) was great too.

Sunken Shrine was beautiful, with my favorite music of the game.

-Tiamat (lol at seeing her here in FFI today and the MW SPN on Monday) was fun. And the whole cloud castle thing was awesome! Great music, atmosphere, and was easy to follow. I didn't get lost the way I did in the fire volcano.

-The Shrine of Chaos skirted the line between boring and epic. I like the four floors each with enemies from a different element with the redux boss fights at the end of each, but it was just so densely packed! My party one-shotted most of them, except those FUCKING DARK WIZARDS AND THEIR POISON. Plus, there was like no treasure or stuff to find, so exploration felt punitive rather than exciting.

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And that's FF1!

I plan to go more moderately here on out. One post every couple of days with some notes on what I've been doing, fun/funny/frustrating stuff that happened, etc. The plan is to go from here through FFX and FFX-2.

(Are those PS2 games easily available on emulators? I haven't tried emulating anything past SNES, so not sure how common/good those are.)

I'll also be starting up FFXIV at some point, probably midway through, as a double-play of whatever single-player game I'm at in the series and XIV. I know very little about it, and so that'll be pretty fresh too!

So.... yeah. Woo hoo! Yay for Final Fantasy!

FFI - Part 2 (addendum)

Ice Cave music was great, and the Matoya's music was pretty fun and jaunty.

My current favorite is the place I'm finishing now, the Sunken Shrine:

FFI - Part 2

Got the Levistone successfully, went back to the dwarf cave, and spent about five minutes yelling at the guy who just kept saying, "If we only had a LEVISTONE, that would be something!" I kept telling him I now list it among my assets, but he just ignored me.

More wandering. And then the airship came out of the desert. WTF. How the hell was I supposed to know to look there? Yeah, some townsperson probably told me at one point, but I don't remember hearing it.

So that let me explore Gaia, the Dragon Cave, and another of those frigging bizarro dungeons that goes fine until it destroys me. Even more sadistically, I beat one of the final bosses, Scarmiglione, before he rose from the dead and one shot me with poison gas.

Anyway, I'm now big. Knight, Ninja, and two wizards.

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And stuck again.

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Some things for me to now puzzle over:

-Some asshole in Gaia stole a fairy and sold it to a caravan. I wonder where I'd go to find a caravan.

-Gaia, the "Eye of the Hawk," kept telling me to visit the "Wing of the Hawk." So I did, and it seems to be an elf city with their own language.

[TNG] Nccneragyl, gurve ynathntr vf abg fvzcyl n yvfg bs zrgncubef sbe vzcbegnag rysl uvfgbevpny riragf naq zlguf.

-Someone in Gaia said there's a scholar out there studying their language, but he doesn't remember who. I'll try to find him. Maybe he's with the caravan?

-Oh, and the Mirage Tower. I was able to walk up to it, but as a Gaian said, no luck. It's un-enterable.

FFI - Part 1 (addendum)

YES! Random wandering bears fruit. Found the Ice Cave after finding a new ship-river dock point. This looks promising.

FFI - Part 1

This has been a surprisingly fun game so far!

Back in elementary school I had the game on Nintendo, but never got past Garland. I ran away from every fight, didn't understand how experience and levels worked, and didn't equip the weapons I bought. Yeah, I gave up quickly. XD

 -Playing this on the GBA (emulated)

 -The graphics in this version are beautiful! I particularly love the "Diamond" spell my white mage has.

-Went with the pre-selected party of a warrior, thief, white mage, and black mage.

-I use save states a bunch, as it's really awkward getting used to dungeons with no save points. I haven't died (well... except once, we'll get there), so it hasn't really felt like cheating.

-I expected the game to be grindier. Like, I thought I'd do a quest, then have to grind in the wilderness for hours for cash and exp, then move on. I think my ignorance works in my favor here actually. I am often so lost that I inadvertently grind while I wander around finding out where to go next.

-Currently, I've re-lit the crystals of fire and earth. Lich was a BRUTAL fight, and a close call. Marilith wasn't tough, though the labyrinth in the fire volcano had me stumbling.

-OH, AND THE DESIGNERS ARE SADISTS.

-So after I killed Lich, I got a cutscene where a cave by Corneria that had a lich statue opened up. Cave of Earthy Gifts or something. I assumed that I had to go there next. And then I'm in a never-ending, Lost Woods-style desert. And then I'm in a purple forest. And then I got my ass handed to me. The final level had two bosses that whomped me before I thought to myself, "Ya know what? I'll come back later." A green monster thing called Echidna and a two-headed dragon that one-shot each of my party members.

-And now I'm stuck.

-I beat Marilith, and didn't know what to do, so I wandered around the world looking for places that my canoe opened up. Eventually I found the Citadel of Trials. This was a fun zone! I wound my way through the labyrinth, and eventually made it to the top, where I got... a rat's tail... Its item description says it's a symbol of truth and justice and the American way and shit like that, so I assume I can use it down the line, but honestly I have no idea when.

-And so here I am. No frigging clue what to do. I wish I had a game manual with a blank world map for me to mark stuff down on, but no such luck. I walked outward from the Citadel of Trials, and encountered DINOSAURS (literally, an allosaurus). This was promising since they seemed like appropriate-level mobs, and the world map showed me near some desert city, but ran into a mountain wall.

-Even the dancer in Corneria who's usually like "lol hai wanna dance oh btw you should kill the fire elemental now" just says "hai wanna dance? yeah, i got nothing. so wanna dance lol?"

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Some possibilities to explore:

-I can try going back to that council in the Crescent Lake area, but I think they told me to come back only when I finished lighting the four crystals. Two to go.

-I can try finishing the Gift Horse Earth Shrine Thing, but I really don't want to. It's long, kind of boring, and the end looked impossible.

-I can try finding the fiends of air and water, but really haven't had luck yet. Plus, one dwarf guy back in the dwarf town mentioned a floating rock, which I imagine is for an airship I eventually get - which I also imagine helps me get to the air boss.

-Just keep wandering and hoping to stumble onto a new river or town or something I can access? Bleh.